In Search of Now: The Science of the Present Moment

by Jo Marchant

A mind-bending but brilliantly accessible exploration of the shifting science behind the reality of time.

What is Now? This immediate moment, what we're experiencing right now . . . it bathes us like air, or gravity. Yet when we try to grasp this quality, to scrutinize it or bring it into focus, it vanishes, slipping through our fingers like a dream. And worse, according to the most trusted models of physics, Now doesn't even exist. If all this is so, then what, exactly, are we experiencing? How do we carve out time, sensation, self, and meaning from a blank, Now-less canvas?

In In Search of Now, award-winning science writer Jo Marchant attempts to answer these questions with characteristic flair and clarity, taking us on a grand tour of the latest thinking from physics, neuroscience, cosmology, and psychiatry about the fundamental essence and individual experience of time. Part personal journey, part philosophical meditation, and above all a fascinating scientific exploration, In Search of Now shows us what we can learn about time, both from the outside in—the cosmic perspective of physics—and as we experience it, from the inside out.

Genres: Science, Nonfiction, Physics, Philosophy, Psychology, History

Audible Audio

First published February 12, 2026

About the author

Dr Jo Marchant is an award-winning science journalist based in London. She has a PhD in genetics and medical microbiology from St Bartholomew’s Hospital Medical College in London, and an MSc in Science Communication (with a dissertation in evidence-based medicine) from Imperial College London. She has worked as an editor at New Scientist and at Nature, and her articles have appeared in publications including The Guardian, Wired UK, The Observer Review, New Scientist and Nature. Her radio and TV appearances include BBC Radio 4’s Start the Week and Today programmes, CNN and National Geographic. She has lectured around the world. Her book Decoding the Heavens was shortlisted for the 2009 Royal Society Prize for Science Books.

Reviews

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Perspective‑Smashing Tour of Time—Engaging, Human, and Ultimately Incomplete

Jo Marchant’s In Search of Now begins with a deceptively simple question—What is “now”?—and quickly reveals just how destabilizing that question can be. Drawing on physics, neuroscience, anthropology, Buddhism, and psychiatry, Marchant sets out to explain why we feel anchored in a flowing present even if science suggests that time itself may be static, illusory, or fundamentally unreal.

The result is a book that feels intellectually ambitious and deeply personal at the same time. It is a rare science narrative that treats the reader not merely as a mind absorbing facts, but as a lived human being embedded in time, memory, and perception.

The Strengths: A Beautifully Human Survey
One of Marchant’s greatest achievements is accessible complexity. Ideas from relativity and quantum mechanics—often walled off behind equations—are translated into language that invites curiosity rather than intimidation. She guides the reader through unfamiliar terrain without drowning them in jargon.

Equally compelling is the human perspective. Marchant grounds abstract science in lived experience, drawing on stories from astronauts, monks, patients with neurological differences, and people whose sense of time has been radically altered. These narratives give emotional weight to the science and make the book feel less like a report and more like an exploration of consciousness itself.

Finally, the book’s interdisciplinary reach is impressive. It’s uncommon to see Buddhism converse so fluidly with neuroscience, or anthropology sit comfortably alongside physics. Marchant doesn’t claim to unify these perspectives, but she places them in dialogue—and that in itself is valuable.

At its best, In Search of Now is a perspective‑smashing read. It loosens the grip of our everyday assumptions and leaves us newly aware that the present moment may not be as simple—or as passive—as we assume.

The Problem: A Tour Without the Engine
And yet, for all its breadth and narrative grace, the book often feels like a guided tour that never steps into the engine room.

Marchant excels at describing what the present feels like, and what various traditions say about time, but she largely avoids the harder question of how reality actually produces the present moment. Time is repeatedly framed as an “illusion,” but the book stops short of explaining the generative process—the underlying dynamics by which each moment comes into being.

The sensation is like watching a movie while never seeing the projector. We’re shown the images on the screen, given stories about audience reactions, even told that the movie itself might not be real—but the machinery that creates those images remains hidden.

Why It Misses the Mark (for Some Readers)
For readers who believe reality is fundamentally relational and process‑driven, this omission becomes significant.

Too much “what,” not enough “how.” The book offers vivid descriptions and thought‑provoking narratives but avoids the deeper, structural mechanics—the “mathematics of creation,” broadly understood—that would explain how the universe builds itself moment by moment.

The familiar refrain. The claim that “time doesn’t really exist” is well‑worn territory. Marchant repeats it compellingly, but without offering a fundamentally new framework to repair our broken intuitions about temporality.

Passive observers, not active participants. Despite occasional gestures toward agency, the book generally treats humans as perceivers of time rather than contributors to it. From a generative or systems‑based viewpoint, this is the central limitation. We are not merely experiencing the present—we are helping to produce it through interaction, feedback, and participation in unfolding processes.

Verdict: A Map Without the Roads
In Search of Now is an excellent introduction for readers who have never seriously questioned the nature of time. It’s engaging, empathetic, and wide‑ranging—a thoughtful existential safari through some of the strangest ideas modern thought has to offer.

But for those seeking a masterclass—a framework that could inform new technology, deeper science, or a truly process‑based understanding of reality—the book remains too thin. It offers landmarks but not the roads that connect them.

Ultimately, Marchant succeeds in convincing us that the present is strange, fragile, and constructed. Where the book falls short is in showing how that construction actually happens. The core takeaway it gestures toward—that the present isn’t just something that happens to us, but something we actively build—is powerful. It’s just a truth that this book hints at rather than fully earns.

Final judgment: enlightening, humane, and beautifully written—but for readers hungry for generative depth, it leaves the most important machinery unexplored.

[Isabel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank you, Jo Marchant, for writing the book I have been searching for. It is the most complete panorama of time I could hope for.
Jo Marchant covers diverse perspectives of time: physics, philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, social sciences.
Sometimes the narrative is somewhat dense, which is unavoidable. The concepts discussed here are mind boggling. I don’t think I was able to grasp them all while listening in a first reading. This is abolo to return to several times.
If you were ever curious about what time is, this book is for you.

[Wayne M Hill · Rating 5 out of 5]

Who knew the present moment could be so complicated? The underlying science of the razor thin gap between the past and the future is teeming with so many bizzare theories. All of the spectacular pontifications spelled out in amazing detail. My brain still hurts from contemplating the mental gymnastics of quantum theory. I am quite certain my science IQ jumped upwards in measurable quantities....LOL. This is a must read for those who have pondered the true nature of the mysteries of the passing of time.

[Whitney Louchheim · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is now among my very favorites, and I definitely want to read it again. Just by addressing time, consciousness, and quantum physics all in one book, she has my attention. But it's the way she addresses them--with humility, curiosity, humor, and an abiding sense of what really matters--that has my heart. The book covers a remarkable breadth of topics, not just the three I mentioned but also neuroscience and physics more broadly, memory, imagination, perception, the sense of self, emotions, cause and effect, and even the entire theory of the universe. She dives into the theories of a vast array of thinkers, both past and present, and from a variety of cultures and viewpoints. It was thought-provoking from start to finish, making me rethink my own assumptions and consider anomalies that I've experienced in a different light.

I also cannot understate the importance of her humble approach. I have recently read several books in which the author is so pompous and presumptuous that I can't stand to keep reading it, even if the ideas themselves are valid. Jo Marchant takes the opposite approach. She respects all viewpoints, gives each idea its due, and carefully weighs different theories. When she comes to a conclusion, she makes it personal rather than implying that I would be an idiot if I didn't come to the same conclusion. I deeply appreciate her approach. It was an added bonus to listen to her narrate her own book, with her warm tones, occasional laughs, and lovely accent. I highly recommend this book!

[Socraticgadfly · Rating 1 out of 5]

In a book like this, with a title like this and its subtitle, knowing that ideas of selfhood would also be involved, even though he’s a philosopher, not a scientist, I expected a hat tip to David Hume’s famous comment about trying to perceive the self:

"For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I can never catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe anything but the perception."

So I looked at the index.

And Hume, this comment or any other, is not in here!

It’s not like Marchant is philosopher-ignorant.

Besides leaning on Anil Seth for theories of mind and consciousness, she references other living philosophers like Galen Strawson, 20th-century giants like Russell, Husserl and Wittgenstein, goes all the way back to the pre-Socratics, and also references Leibniz from Hume’s own general time.

But no Hume. (And no other British Empiricist, for that matter, even though chapters a little bit over halfway through the book discuss ideas related to empiricist ideas of the mind and the universe.)

Anyway, seeing him not in here, I figured I had to check out the book to figure out how much to review-bomb it because no Hume gets you a ding for sure.

But, “ding”? Hell, no. By the time I was a fair way in, I realized this book was going to get a crushing review bombing, complete with the “mendaciousness” bookshelf tag. (I also gave it the "philosophy" tag, but, per the below, refuse to give it any tag for any natural science.)

Let’s dig in, staying with what all Marchant left out in what I am assuming is intentional philosophy bias against Hume in particular and empiricism in general.

Hume’s comments refer to ideas of a “soul” as well as self or consciousness.

From this, Hume noted elsewhere that without change, we would not have a “now.”

Hume himself writes, “that time or duration consists of different parts: for otherwise we could not conceive of a longer or shorter duration.”

Also, many sites will tell you about Hume’s influence on Einstein. They’ll also tell you, related to that, that Hume questioned Newton’s idea of absolute time.

Aeon has a long essay about this:

‘From the philosophical perspective, nothing nearly as clear seems to have been written on the topic.’ Then he went on to express his intellectual debt to ‘Hume, whose Treatise of Human Nature I had studied avidly and with admiration shortly before discovering the theory of relativity. It is very possible that without these philosophical studies I would not have arrived at the solution.’

See how mendacious it is, from that pull quote alone, for Marchant, in her many mentions of Einstein, to never mention Hume? Read the whole piece, and you'll see in blinding detail the degree of mendaciousness.

Related and coming from the latter part of the book? Her discussion of quantum theory is incomplete on the varieties of interpretations possible, including looking at it in non “romantic” terms of classical statitstical mechanics. More weirdly yet, Schrödinger is never mention in her discussion of the quantum world. At this point, I basically stopped reading and figured we were in one-star territory. My thoughts on Schrödinger, his cat, and his smoking too much Bhagavad Gita.

This all really, really came out about page 200 and shortly thereafter. Before page 100, with the Hume ding, I figured were were at best 3.5 stars rounded down, and by 150 or so, figured we were at 2 stars. Obviously, these things were the final self-burials Marchant committed.

But as noted, she was on the downslope before this.

That’s because I’m not enamored of her choices of modern philosophers of consciousness and ideas and theories of consciousness much more than I am enamored of her writing Hume out of the picture.

First, I’m not enamored of Anil Seth so leaning heavily on him can get you another ding. (Per the link? Active inference with a Bayesian background is itself not bad, but he loves to make overblown claims and is all wet on free will, including repeated strawmanning.)

And while Andy Clark, also leaned on, is somewhat better than Seth, that’s a low bar. Spinning off Clark, she proposes an enactivist version of qualia that sounds like high-octane pure empiricism, but she still can’t reference empiricism. Maybe it’s a matter of fear, of being called out for all the wrongness of empiricism.

The fact that humans’ two primary senses evolved to see electromagnetic radiation of certain wavelengths and hear certain frequencies of material vibrations show that the world of consciousness can’t be entirely “in here.” With light, in fact, all creatures with sensory organs evolved to see in roughly the same wavelengths, with some tilting more left, some more right, a few extending into either the low ultraviolet or the upper infrared, because of the wavelengths of radiation the sun puts out, followed by plant evolution, above all chlorophyll’s color. Things like this continue to put paid to the problems of empiricism or some sort of backdoor neoempiricism that Marchant may be trying to do, even with dissing The King of Empiricists.

I mean, human brains and sensory systems, and animal nervous systems in general, evolved for better survival odds in response to specific environments.

Although Marchant doesn’t mention directly Karl Friston and his Free Energy Principle as much, it too is considered overstated by many. One critique?

More importantly, we observe that a mathematically central step in the argument, connecting the behaviour of a system to variational inference, relies on an implicit equivalence between the dynamics of the average states of a system with the average of the dynamics of those states. This equivalence does not hold in general even for linear stochastic systems, since it requires an effective decoupling from the system's history of interactions.

This applies to circa page 170. It's kind of like a high-level version of confusing "mean" and "median" as two different types of averaging.

On lesser things, I’m not sure she’s a “determinist,” but she seems to pass forward Seth’s strawmanning of free will. Beyond all of the above, per a low-star reviewer, there’s also not a “throughline” here.

Review bomb complete. And, assuming Marchant has a philosophical bias about even discussing empiricism in general and Hume in particular, I won’t read her again.

[Cheryl · Rating 1 out of 5]

Here’s what really blows my mind about the flowing hum of happening that we call Now. According to the most trusted models of physics, Now doesn’t exist. There is no such thing. From vast, billion-year expanses spanning the lifetime of the cosmos down to the impossibly brief femto- and zeptoseconds that capture the whirling of atoms; and from the universe’s explosive birth to its cold, dark predicted end; each and every point in time is ever-present and mathematically equal. In all the equations that we use to explain the universe, there’s no moving spotlight; no meaningful flow from one moment into the next; no fixed past versus uncertain future; and absolutely nothing whatsoever that’s special about Now.

If time is a river, how fast does it run? How long does a minute feel, or an hour, or a day? It’s an impossible question. One of the most prominent features of our inner sense of Now is how malleable it is, the extent to which it can stretch and shrink. If we’re excited or having fun, our flow of experience becomes a racing current: a blur of lightning-fast moments that flash effortlessly from one to the next. But if nothing much is happening, say we’re waiting for a train or sitting lonely at home, we can experience each moment as a stagnant, barely moving pool, through stretched-out episodes of boredom that feel as if they will never end. We can also switch off our awareness of passing events altogether, as during sleep or anaesthesia. But there’s one thing we generally can’t do. We can’t get time to stop. However hard we try, we can’t hold on to a single experience: a single Now.

Enactivists argue that neither can exist without the other. Just as there is no separate, concrete self that lies beyond our inferences, neither is there any hidden, ‘true’ world. ‘Nature is not independent of the perceiver or agent,’ says enactivist philosopher Shaun Gallagher. There is no little person and no submarine: no metal walls, no computer, no joysticks and pedals separating us from the truth beyond. The perceptions and sensations themselves – the call and response, the meeting or thwarting of predictions – these are reality. These are what existence is made of. It’s worth taking a moment to think about this because it’s a reversal of everything we’re normally taught about how the world is. Meditators can spend years mulling on such concepts just to feel a glimpse of what such a unified reality might be like. In this view, our perceptions or experiences – the melancholy of raindrops on a window, the exhilaration of diving into an icy pool – are real in themselves.

Intriguingly for our exploration, quantum interpretations have opened up some different ways of thinking about the nature of time. ‘Many worlds’ fits well with the conventional block universe, in which there’s no special role for the present moment and each time point connects predictably to the next. This is a vast but inevitable reality in which there’s no meaningful ‘happening’ and the universe (with all its branches) is set out according to one all-encompassing, pre-laid plan. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Others see in the quantum revolution an opportunity to reinstate creativity and unpredictability in physics: with flowing time and the ability for new things to happen in the world. In different ways, they’re calling for the return of Now.

[Andy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I received an advance review copy of this book via Goodreads in exchange for an honest review. I very much enjoyed Jo Marchant's book Cure: A Journey into the Science of Mind Over Body about the placebo effect, so I had high hopes for this. The science of time is a bewildering topic and I like Carlo Rovelli's The Order of Time, which is along the lines of "here are some mind-bending concepts to consider." Marchant mentions Rovelli many times, but understandably takes a different approach.
In Search of Now forcefully insists from the beginning that "Now doesn't exist." Therefore there is no flow of time, and therefore no real causality or free will or anything that goes along with that. This is good fun for philosophers and fourteen-year-olds. But otherwise, it's somewhere between unhelpful and extremely dangerous.
In the Universe where I am writing a book review right now, there is a now, and time and causality, because otherwise this review does not exist. Marchant had to write the book before I could read it. Reading/writing in English we go from left to right on the page, looking at the letters in sequence or else there's no meaning. And so on. Even if my brain is full of reality-filtering glitches and there are a million bazillion googol other simultaneous branching universes, in this book review there has to be now, time, causality, etc.

In the present moment I encounter in the newspaper everyday, here in the universe inhabited by everyone else on this timeline, I think what we desperately need is more emphasis on causality and consequences in our shared objective reality.

[R · Rating 3 out of 5]

While the content of this book is interesting, I really felt like I was struggling with it. Taking on different perspectives of ways of thinking about Now and the perception thereof is ambitious, and this is one of the rare cases where I've read a book and wished it had a bit more of a roadmap from the onset. The chapters in the book take on different frames for thinking about now, but sometimes it felt a bit disjointed, and I wanted to have a better sense of where things were going / why a particular topic was chosen, and whether it was worth pushing through.

I think scientific writing also often poses a challenge in terms of getting the right level of detail for the audience - i.e. you don't want it to be so in the weeds that you lose people, but if it's too high level the audience either wants to know more about the mechanics of things, or may wonder if you're jumping to conclusions or overgeneralizing things. I didn't really feel like the level of detail in this book clicked for me...in general there was a fair amount of detail, to the point where I felt a little bogged down, but there were still points where I wondered if things were being oversimplified too. There are some concepts the author revisits periodically as well, but to me they sometimes felt more redundant than additive.

Long story short - I thought the substance was interesting, but the organization and presentation of the material seemed like it could have been tightened up.

[Dani · Rating 3 out of 5]

As someone interested in mindfulness, somatic work, neuroscience, and the idea of accessing “the present moment,” In Search of Now immediately felt like a book I should love.

And in many ways, I did appreciate it.

The book explores “now” through multiple frameworks without forcing the reader toward one definitive answer. I actually really enjoyed that ambiguity. Rather than trying to neatly define the present moment, the book seems more interested in exploring why it’s so difficult to define at all.

There are a lot of genuinely fascinating ideas here, especially around perception, consciousness, and how humans construct the experience of time. The writing is also impressively accessible considering the complexity of the subject matter.

That said, I ultimately landed at 3 stars because I struggled to stay fully engaged from beginning to end. While I found many of the individual concepts intriguing, I never quite found a strong enough throughline pulling me forward chapter to chapter. Once it became clear that the journey itself, rather than arriving at any concrete understanding of “now”, was the point, I found myself losing momentum a bit.

For me, this worked better as a collection of thought experiments and perspectives than as a fully compelling reading experience.

Still, I think readers who enjoy contemplative science writing, consciousness studies, philosophy, or explorations of perception and reality will find a lot to engage with here.

[James Easterson · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent book which covers most all the bases. I got off to a bad start with this book, hoping to read a book from the physics perspective, and except for the very beginning (which described the Block Universe theory which I very much disagree with) it focuses on neurology and psychology for most all the first half of the book. All very good and interesting, but I skimmed much of it until I realized it had some interesting things to say. Thus I am planning to re-read the book. But once into the second half of the book, hooray!, quantum physics! Carlo Rovelli once advised readers not to try to turn things into philosophy but that is exactly why I am so interested in quantum physics. My take on "Now" nicely follows Relational Quantum Theory. "Now" is simply the relative collapsing of the wave function of probability into reality for each individual. It's a continuous and ongoing thing. Change is the only constant. For the most part at the fundamental level, the world is non-deterministic and thank god for that. It provides us agency. Another eye opening book which I greatly recommend is "Waves in an Impossible Sea" by Matt Strassler. It reveals Quantum Field Theory beautifully. The very fundamental basics of what it is all about. So wonderful to dig this deep and get some idea of it all. I think another thing to keep an eye on is emergent phenomenon where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts and how exactly that works and where it comes into play. Read on!

[Sekar Writes · Rating 3 out of 5]

Full review and summary

In Search of Now explores a question that sounds simple but turns out to be surprisingly complicated: what exactly is the present moment?

The book explores various fields, such as physics, neuroscience, and philosophy, to investigate how humans experience “now.” I enjoyed how the author connects big scientific ideas with everyday experiences like memory, perception, and awareness. The discussion about how our brains assemble the present moment was complex as well as fascinating.

Some sections get dense when the book goes into physics, but the overall discussion remains engaging. By the end, the idea of time feels less like a ticking clock and more like an unfolding flow of events that we actively participate in.

[Andrea Wenger · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book embarks on a journey through cosmology, quantum mechanics, psychology, and neuroscience to explore the essence of time and the origin of our feeling of "nowness." Blending personal reflection with scientific inquiry, it examines how we perceive the flow of events and whether our experience of the present is truly an illusion.

Interesting and accessible, this book offers a variety of ways of looking at the flow of time. I do get a little frustrated, though, with the way scientists seem to posit that if something can't be proven mathematically, it's an illusion. We all know what "now" is, and that concept is fundamental to our experience. "Now" may be relative, and it may be fleeting, but it definitely exists—even if math can't fully capture or explain the human experience.

Thanks, NetGalley, for the ARC I received. This is my honest and voluntary review.

[Frank · Rating 4 out of 5]

The past has gone; the future is to come; but where, exactly, is the Now? As soon as we think we've grasped it, it's gone. This book is a hunt for this ephemeral mystery. With insights from neuroscience, anthropology, behavioral science, and physics, Marchant paints a fascinating picture of a universe created in each moment, a present that is constructed more than it is experienced.

Fans of Rovelli's The Order of Time will particularly appreciate In Search of Now, but recommended for all interested in the subject of time.

[Anya Rose · Rating 4 out of 5]

I can tell this book took serious effort. It’s painstakingly researched and carefully constructed. The idea that we can only distinguish events roughly 20 to 60 milliseconds apart, and that anything closer collapses into a single moment, really landed for me. It also reinforces the book’s point that “now” may be an illusion, with the mind continually revising past experience to assemble what feels like the present, and even the self.

[Tommy Maker · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a book that delves into why we exist, and also how mental health works. I found it a very fascinating book to listen too, especially as it was narrated by the author. I would highly recommend this one especially to those who are training within the medical field. There is no such thing as now because before we know it, it has become the past. It takes 3 seconds for us to remember things and for it to remain with us. 3 seconds is longer than we realise.

[Steve Jordan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well, the Now is pretty much the most important thing ever--it's both everything and yet nothing. It makes it a very slippery topic, one you can't really write about book about, but here we are. Four stars for just tackling the concept. And yet, I had trouble paying attention for some of the time, and it's a whole lot of science, and I might be more philosophically inclined. For some reason a lot of what was being said just didn't sink in. But that's probably on me.

[Susie Minahan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was quite interesting- really enjoyed the conversation on quantum physics and QBism and what it could mean - quite fascinating.

[William T · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book within the limits of what is possible given the subject matter.

[Hugh Nugent · Rating 3 out of 5]

Got slightly bored, couldn’t finish. I’ve been reading way too much and I’m very burnt out so will come back to this book and silent spring in a month

[Superbunny · Rating 3 out of 5]

the narration was annoying. she's drags - like how she probably talks. this isn't graphic audio.

[Sara Goldenberg · Rating 2 out of 5]

Goes on a little bit. I know it's written for the layperson but it didn't speak to me.